Roddy Piper was put on this Earth to chew bubblegum and kick
ass and he's all out of bubblegum.

He put on those dark shades in "They Live" (1988),
and saw things how they really were. The billboards read, "OBEY." The
1%-er investment bankers were really skull- faced aliens, and the rising income
inequality that has been going on in this country at least since Reagan took
office was all laid bare in a modestly-budgeted John Carpenter sci-fi movie
starring a professional wrestler.

But "Rowdy" Roddy Piper wasn't just any
pro-wrestler. He was probably the craziest man in the insane asylum. He busted beer bottles over his head and let the blood just drip down his face while
issuing challenges to the Sheepherders, all in front of a live studio audience.
He also wrestled a bear once in Fresno. Another wrestler slapped a handful of
honey on Piper's trunks as he made his way into the ring. The bear buried his
snout in Piper's rear for several painful minutes. This was called paying your
dues, and Piper paid them in full with interest.

He was an undersized hellhead in a world of giants who made
you believe that he was a menace to 6'8" mounds of muscle like Hulk Hogan
through sheer intensity. That crazy glint in Roddy's eye that made him a top
attraction during the WWF's (now WWE) 1980s WrestleMania boom period, also made
him so believable as John Carpenter's alien-blasting bindlestiff in "They
Live." Sure, Kurt Russell, Carpenter's muse in so many similar films in
the 1980s, could have acted circles around Piper, but he wouldn't have put in a
better performance.

When Piper says, "You look like your head fell in the
cheese dip back in 1957," to one of those skeletal aliens, it's the same
kind of line that could have incited a riot in the wrestling ring, as Piper
recalls doing in Los Angeles and Puerto Rico in his autobiography, "In the Pit With Piper" (Berkley Trade, 2002). Piper knew the power of insults in
a way that no mere actor ever could.

Born Roderick George Toombs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on
April 17, 1954, Piper had his first wrestling match by the time he was 15. He
wrestled Larry "The Axe" Hennig in Winnipeg. Hennig beat Piper in ten
seconds.

"That match certainly didn't help my confidence,"
he once recalled to me.

In 1975, when Piper was just 18, he made his way to Los
Angeles, where he became the protégé of "Judo" Gene LeBell, an
ass-kicking renaissance man who mastered overlapping careers in martial arts,
pro-wrestling and movie stunt work that would've permanently crippled lesser
men. LeBell taught Piper the chokeholds and arm bars that he needed to survive
in the wrestling ring, where the fights may have been fake, but the pain never
was.

In 1978, LeBell brought Piper into another one of his
spheres, helping Roddy land his first movie role in Carl Reiner's "The One
and Only," a heavily fictionalized Gorgeous George biopic starring Henry
Winkler during his Fonz heyday. For Piper's part, Winkler smashed a German
helmet repeatedly over his skull during a sports montage. Pain was always going
to be part of Piper's art.

While "They Live" is the film that Piper will be
best remembered for, and the only film many people think he was ever in, he
ground his way through enjoyable low-budget junk-food like "Hell Comes to
Frog Town" (1988), "Body Slam" (1986) and "Street Team
Massacre" (2007). He also amassed guest starring roles in such television
shows as "Walker Texas Ranger," "Highlander,"
"Robocop," and a recurring role in " It's Always Sunny in
Philadelphia" as, appropriately, Da' Maniac. Like so many stars of
straight-to-streaming grindhouse fare, Piper leaves four films in
post-production, ensuring that he'll have new releases hitting the Redbox for
months to come.

The one time I had anything resembling a conversation with
Piper was when I was the ghostwriter for LeBell's autobiography. Piper dictated
the foreword to Gene LeBell's autobiography to me over the phone. As he wrapped
up his piece on his mentor and sensei, I told him that I was flying out for a
two-week wrestling tour of Europe the next day.

"That's rough, brother," he said. "That's
real rough."

Then he asked how much I was making on the tour. It's not a
rude question in wrestling circles. When I told him, he said, "$100 for
wrestling? That's not bad for wrestling."

That moment of empathy from such a tough man made today's
news of Piper's passing much harder to take than other celebrity deaths. By the
end of Piper's active pro-wrestling career, he was a throwback who struggled to
maintain a sense of honor in an industry that increasingly had little use for
such things. He was a true mensch in a business (hell, a world) full of
thieves. He honored handshake agreements, and was loyal to those who had his
back and gave him his start.

Sometime last night, Piper posted a tweet that ended with,
"YOU PICKED THE
WRONG GUY TO BULLY!" Then he went to bed, and never woke up.

Looking
at it now, "YOU PICKED THE WRONG GUY TO BULLY" with the caps lock
going full throttle is as fitting an epitaph for "Rowdy" Roddy Piper
as any. He will not only be missed, but I know so many people who miss him
already.

]]>
tag:www.rogerebert.com,2005:Review/55b69a37592cb034eb0000dc2015-07-31T09:29:00-05:002015-07-31T10:42:48-05:00The End of the TourMatt Zoller Seitz

Directed by James Ponsoldt ("The Spectacular Now"), "The End of the Tour" might fit well on a double bill with "Amadeus," another film about a genius and a lesser artist who basks in his aura. Of course, the setting is very different, and the stakes are much lower—"Tour" is a fictionalized account of the week-and-a-half that Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky spent following the late David Foster Wallace as he toured to promote his doorstop-sized masterpiece "Infinite Jest"—but it's still the story of a competent but unremarkable creative person observing brilliance up close, feeding on it, reveling in it and resenting it.

It is also certainly one of cinema's finest explorations of an incredibly specific dynamic—that of the cultural giant and the reporter who fantasizes about one day being as great as his subject, and in the same field. What it definitely isn't is a biography of David Foster Wallace, much less a celebration of his work and worldview. Whether that proves a deal breaker, a bonus, or a non-factor for viewers will depend on what they want out of this movie.

"The End of the Tour" is not really about Wallace (Jason Segel), although he's the other major character. It starts with Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) expressing amazement (but really jealousy) over a rave review of "Infinite Jest" in New York magazine, a moment that sparks his obsession with Wallace. It ultimately leaves us thinking about Lipsky's feelings and career trajectory, and whether he feels any guilt about using his brief association with Wallace to further his own career as a writer of books. At this point in his life, Lipsky has had just one volume published, a novel that few people bought and fewer read; after some hesitation, he foists it on Wallace while visiting him at the University of Illinois during a punishingly icy winter.

The screenplay by Donald Margulies spends most of its time and energy observing a dance. One dancer is Lipsky. He only got Rolling Stone to pay for his rock-star style profile of a novelist by agreeing to ask Wallace about the rumors that he uses heroin, and his motivations for doing the story are, to put it mildly, less than noble. The other dancer is Wallace. His fiction and nonfiction were partly concerned with the meaning of the word "authenticity," and how the social rituals and technology and economic structure of modern life created false intimacies that Wallace was determined to reject.

Theirs is a complex relationship, brief as it is. The most fascinating thing about it is how each side of it seems to be happening in a different storytelling genre.

Wallace's side of the story is something along the lines of a light drama, perhaps even a romance, about somebody who's been burned over and over and has withdrawn from nearly all relationships save for a handful that he feels he can trust and believe in. Although the small part of the world that cares about writers' private lives thinks of Wallace as a bit of a recluse and perhaps a bit mysterious, it's immediately clear that he's just selective and self-protecting. It's the story of a man learning to trust again (in a love story, it would be "to love again") while worrying that he's going to get burned one more time. Lipsky isn't a Wallace-level intellect, he is very smart, and a good listener, and excellent at getting subjects to open up, even though his demeanor is presumptuous. He doesn't approach Wallace with the appropriate humility. He instead comes at him from the point-of-view of a writer who believes that he is Wallace's potential equal—somebody as profound as Wallace but not as accomplished or famous, for now. Wallace seems to buy this. Why? Maybe because he's a teacher, and at least a few of his students have real talent, and he doesn't want his ego or insecurity to rule out the possibility that he might cross paths with an artist. Or maybe he's just a decent, optimistic guy.

Lipsky's side of the story often feels like the story of of a con man, or a regular person who uses other people without realizing that's what he's doing. If this were a romantic drama, Lipsky might be a drug user who swears he's gotten clean, or a recovering alcoholic who's not as far along in the process as he claims to be, or a serial cheater who wants everyone to think he's reformed and can be monogamous even though he's constitutionally incapable of that. We keep waiting for the other shoe to drop—for Wallace, who genuinely likes Lipsky even though he's observant enough to spot all the warning signs immediately, to realize that Lipsky cannot have a real friendship with him, and that in general it is a bad idea for a subject to think that he can have that kind of relationship with a reporter.

Any journalist who's been profiling famous people for any length of time will recognize the dynamic depicted here by Ponsoldt, Eisenberg and Jason Segel, and the honest ones will be made uncomfortable by it. There is something vampiric about features like the one that Lipsky has been assigned to write. There are also elements of theatricality. As Wallace observes early on, the subject is expected to give a performance of sorts, imitating the person he'd like to be perceived as being. The reporter in turn playacts casual curiosity, and tries to push past the facade and find something real, maybe uncomfortable, best of all revelatory.

Segel and Eisenberg, who as movie stars have been in Wallace's position many times, have an intuitive understanding of how this relationship works, and they illuminate it in the moment, with specificity and clarity. Segel doesn't really look or sound like Wallace (not that that matters; Anthony Hopkins didn't look or sound like Nixon in "Nixon" but was extraordinary) and I didn't necessarily buy him as somebody who could write like Wallace, but he's so smart and genuine and peculiar that we believe he is capable of Wallace's extreme sensitivity and delicate observations—a major accomplishment. Eisenberg is the true star of the movie—an actor of extraordinary originality and also bravery, insofar as he never seems to trouble himself with whether people will hate his characters. He's a great listener but also a rather scary one. His characters often seem to be scrutinizing other characters the way a snake might scrutinize a field mouse. There are many moments in "The End of the Tour" when we dislike Lipsky. There are a few moments where we might find him sickening.

Is this a story that will fascinate an audience beyond editors, critics, reporters, novelists, and people who care about the problems of such people? I have no idea, though it seems unlikely; the film's incredible specificity would seem to mitigate against being discovered and championed by a wide audience, despite Segel and Eisenberg's presence in the cast. Did the film necessarily need to have David Foster Wallace as one of its two main characters? That's a thornier question. We rarely hear any of his prose read aloud (Lipsky reads a passage of "Jest" to his girlfriend, but that's about it) and there is nothing in the film besides some of Wallace's dialogue to indicate that the movie has any interest in illuminating Wallace's fiction, or the obsessions that he worked into them.

It is very much an Amadeus and Salieri story, and if you are familiar with Amadeus, and the barest outlines of Wallace's life, and the fact that this is based on a nonfiction book by the writer David Lipsky, you know how the story must end: with Lipsky gaining a greater measure of fame via his brief association with Wallace and not being quite sure how to feel about it. The best thing you could say about "The End of the Tour" is that it could've been about any two creative people. That's also the worst thing you could say about it.

Examining the fiery, acerbic debates televised debates between William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal during the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1968, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon’s “The Best of Enemies” provides a rich, extraordinarily fascinating account that’s sure to have many viewers’ minds constantly shuttling between then and now, noting how different certain things about politics and media were in that distant era, yet marveling at how directly those archaic realities led to many of our own.

The differences may jump out first. Like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, the Buckley-Vidal throwdown was the product of the decade when television was truly in full effect in American life, and much was brand new. The 1968 conventions were the first to be broadcast in color, and an estimated 80 percent of Americans watched them. It was not an even playing field for the three networks, though. CBS and NBC had their star anchors (Walter Cronkite on the former, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the latter) and set out to broadcast the events gavel-to-gavel.

Poor third-place ABC, with neither the stars nor the resources to match its competitors, needed a gimmick, and it lit upon a corker: have two ideological opposites debate the conventions as part of the network’s coverage. The choice of antagonists could not have been more incendiary. William F. Buckley, editor of the National Review and host of PBS’ “Firing Line,” was already the nation’s leading conservative media celebrity. Asked by the network if there was anyone he would not debate, he said he would refuse any Communist, or Gore Vidal. So the network of course enlisted Vidal, a celebrity provocateur from the left side of the dial, and persuaded Buckley to accept it.

The two had a history. They had crossed paths at political events in 1962 and 1964 and come away with a profound mutual loathing. As one interviewee, the late Christopher Hitchens, understates, “They really did despise each other.” That antipathy, which evidently owed much to Vidal’s taunting pan-sexuality and Buckley’s rigid Catholic revulsion at same, didn’t erupt into history-making acrimony till the ninth of the ten debates, but it’s in plain view from the first.

These exchanges came in the context of an America that was “being split at the seams,” as one commentator puts it. The Tet offensive in the winter showed the Vietnam War spiraling toward disaster. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated not long after, the former death sparking riots across the country. When the Republicans decided to hold their convention in Miami—their first below the Mason-Dixon line in 104 years—it was intended to distance the event from protestors.

When we see Buckley and Vidal in the first debate, both seem self-conscious and slightly awkward, with forced smiles and graceless stabs at jocularity. No doubt the pressurized situation and their intense dislike of each other accounted for this initial discomfort, but the two media pros soon overcame it. Still, they were fundamentally ill-matched in the initial round: While Buckley had gone sailing prior to the convention, Vidal had hired a researcher and come away with a sheaf of Buckley quotes that he used to nail him. Buckley soon rectified his mistake.

Speaking of the differences between then and now, it’s striking how remote from any current TV personalities they are. Both were products of plush upbringings and boarding schools, with patrician accents and mannerisms that scream privilege and hauteur. Yet despite the upper-crust images, they were not, as one observer notes, products of the old Eastern establishment, but conquerors of it: outsiders who found their way in.

Public intellectuals of a sort almost unknown today—which is to say, real intellectuals totally accustomed to the media glare—both men were extremely prolific authors who also ventured into the arena of politics. Vidal ran for Congress in 1960 with the support of presidential candidate John F. Kennedy (Jackie Kennedy was related to the author by marriage); on losing the race, he bitterly left the U.S. for Italy. For Buckley, losing his race for New York City mayor to liberal John V. Lindsay in 1965 was not a total defeat; it helped him sharpen the ideas that would guide right-wing politicos in years to come.

In a sense, the two debaters we see sparring in 1968 are prophets in the making. Buckley’s ideas, perhaps more than any other thinker’s, undergirded the conservative movement that gathered momentum during the next decade and resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. And Buckley’s own brother, Reid Buckley, actually uses the word “prophesy” in crediting Vidal for warning about the dangers of America turning into an overextended empire like ancient Rome.

Indeed, the racial turmoil of 1968, the arguments over economic inequality (Vidal called the GOP the “party of greed” while quoting statistics showing far less disparity than is the case now), the draining foreign entanglements, the “culture wars” over values and morality, together with Buckley’s and Vidal’s provocatively contrasting views of all such subjects – it all make the debates we hear feel very much connected to the present day.

Yet the sharpest verbal blows waged aren’t ideological but personal. It happens in that ninth debate, after the scene has shifted to the Democratic convention in Chicago, where chaos reins in the streets outside (and Vidal has been tear-gassed along with Paul Newman and Arthur Miller). During one heated exchange, Vidal calls Buckley a “crpyto-Nazi” and Buckley replies, “Listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”

Even now, you can practically hear the nation gasp. Mr. and Mrs. America were not used to hearing such language, or witnessing such visceral hatred between respected cultural figures, on the pacifying white-bread TV of the time. The repercussions were felt instantly. Says Dick Cavett of ABC: “The network shat.”

Strangely, as the film shows, this moment of white-hot vituperation had an even greater effect on the two men involved than on the culture at large. Neither could put it behind him. Buckley wrote a long piece for Esquire the following year ruminating on the contretemps. When Vidal riposted with (insulting) thoughts of his own, Buckley sued the magazine and the writer, a lawsuit that dragged on for years (Esquire eventually settled). As the intimates of both men tell it, they were haunted by the exchange till the end of their days, with Vidal apparently gaining a small degree of satisfaction in outliving Buckley and thus being able to have the final word.

Naturally, the way the Vidal-Buckley battle served as a template for all the idiotic political shouters on TV in years to come does not go unnoted. And not surprisingly, the verdict on this is that we’ve now evolved into a polarized culture where such high-volume screaming matches are virtually all heat and no light. The 1968 debates, critic Eric Alterman offers, were a “harbinger of an unhappy future.”

In his masterful “Museum Hours,” filmmaker Jem Cohen merged his skills as an urban documentarian with a narrative about two unlikely
friends. Art, history, companionship, support and everyday life merged into one
vision. His latest, “Counting,” billed as a “A film in 15 Chapters,” is both
more ambitious and less purposeful in its intent. Clearly designed as a nod to
Chris Marker (particularly “Sans Soleil”), “Counting” captures life around the
world in all its simplicity and diversity, as Cohen bounces back and forth from
New York City to Russia to Turkey, and locales in between. There’s little
narration, little noise at all outside of the hum of traffic or the whine of a
train or the rustle of leaves. Most people in frame are seen from behind, or
via reflection, or from a distance. And there are cats. Everywhere. Cohen isn’t
as interested in faces as he is urban tableaus. The result is a challenging
work that can be both exhilarating and grueling in its deliberate pace. Cohen
is an undeniably gifted filmmaker, even if the sum total of this piece isn’t
quite as interesting as its parts.

“Counting” opens in New York City, featuring footage that
the filmmaker captured around the city from 2012 to 2014. The first segment of “Counting,”
which I believe is also its longest, is arguably its best as it’s a fantastic
display of Cohen’s skills. He can turn the mundane imagery of urban existence
into art by the way it’s shot, scored, or juxtaposed with another image. What
captures his eye and the way he weaves into a piece can often result in great
art. In the first segment, we hear a speech about discovering the secrets of
the universe while we view a sedentary homeless person. We see a torn page with
a headline about “The World’s Last Mysteries.” Cohen is placing imagery and
audio of the questions of the universe against reflections of travelers on a
train or a homeless man crossing the street. This is daily life and the world’s
greatest mysteries are contained within it.

Cohen has a remarkable ability to go from placid, almost
soothing imagery to kinetic, more frantic footage like when he captures an “I
Can’t Breathe” protest scored to discordant, loud music. Even flags waving in
the wind at a car dealership look antagonistic. He’s playing with the essence
of filmmaking here, knowing that the images just before and after those flags,
along with the choice of audio, change the way the viewer responds to them.

Sometimes Cohen can be straightforward and even didactic,
such as in chapter 7, in which he presents imagery of reflections of people on
their phones accompanied by audio of testimony about the NSA wiretapping.
Although even this “short film within the big film” feels contextually resonant
within a piece that feels, at least to me, about interconnectivity and
commonality. Cohen jumps around the world and finds numerous images that look
like reflections of each other. People crossing squares in New York City and
St. Petersburg become often indistinguishable. Some of his compositions are
picture-postcard beautiful while others take a minute to even discern what it
is being displayed. And he’s obsessed with travel and motion. A voice sings in
one chapter, “Do you ever wonder where it
is you’re wandering?” We’re all wanderers around this world that’s more
similar than we even know.

There are times, many times actually, when “Counting” feels
a bit too self-indulgent, something that never struck me during “Museum Hours,”
an undeniably more accessible piece for the average filmgoer. It starts to get
a bit exhausting and unfocused. Unpacking “Counting” can be difficult, and it
feels at times like it’s purposefully so, as if Cohen is challenging
traditional expectations of film analysis, even ones as often abstract as his.
But one cannot deny the ambition of “Counting,” a movie that travels the world,
connecting it through the commonality of both everyday behavior and the
universal language of cinema.

“Counting” ends almost peacefully, with images of calm and
night. I was hoping for a bit more cumulative power, something to tie these
chapters together, but I think Cohen purposefully avoids those kind of easy
cinematic answers. Maybe these are just images, people and places around the
world that he found interesting. Perhaps you will too. And sometimes life is as
simple as that.

Hong Kong neo-noir "Wild City" takes its time going everywhere it needs to go. That's not a diplomatic way of saying that the film is boring, nor is it a polite way of admitting that the film is poorly paced. Instead, "Wild City," the first feature film written and directed by master Hong Kong filmmaker Ringo Lam ("City on Fire," "Full Alert") in 12 years, is unhurried, stylish, and completely unreal. This is a movie that introduces you to T-Man (Louis Koo, contemporary Hong Kong cinema's answer to Chow Yun-Fat), its jaded lead protagonist, by showing him staring off in the mid-distance on a crowded Hong Kong street corner. This is shortly after T-Man laments that money corrupts everything, a theme that the film returns to frequently. T-Man's world of middle-men gangsters, fairweather associates, and commonplace violence feels real because Lam takes his sweet time while rehashing a story you've probably seen in one form of another. This is a film noir that is, despite some jittery, Tony Scott-esque action sequences, so cool, that you will leave it begging for a sequel.

Meet T-Man, an unfortunately-named anti-hero who could easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with modern pulp heroes like Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne. T-Man, a bartender and haunted ex-cop, is the kind of pragmatic gentleman who gracefully gives Yun (Tong Liya), a mysterious drunk, a couch to crash on after she gets in a bad car accident, but also casually asks step-mom Mona (Yuen Qui) to be his "witness" that he did nothing untoward to Yun. Yun may be the crux of a mystery that involves a stolen briefcase, a gang of lead-pipe-wielding thugs, and T-Man's brother Chung (Shawn Yue). But "Wild City" is all about T-Man, a not-all-good guy whose wardrobe comes in shades of white: bright-white khakis, and cream-colored jackets all look amazing on Koo.

"Wild City" is also a film with twists that can be seen from a mile away, though that doesn't really matter. "Wild City" reminds me of a line from a recent Leonard Cohen song: "I've always liked it slow/slow is in my blood." You could easily believe that line is true of Lam, even if "Wild City" is the first film you've seen by Lam. To be fair, the film is clearly made by an older filmmaker who wants to prove his relevance by modernizing his style in some ways, and retaining its laid-back essence in most others. So some of the film's chase scenes are frantic, full of jittery in-camera effects, over-exposed lenses, and choppy editing that give you the feeling of being shell-shocked during pivotal chase scenes. And some lines of dialogue are hokey as sin, particularly when T-Man laments that he gets no kick from money: "In exchange for time that can never be returned, this printed paper is all over-valued."

Luckily, Koo delivers a star-worthy turn and holds "Wild City" together in the same way that Chow Yun-Fat and Lau Ching-wan did for Lam's earlier efforts. Koo is so good that he makes you see Lam's style as style, and not a desperate collection of aesthetic quirks. Just look at the scene where Chung, Yun, and T-Man have a fight while they're aboard a small yacht (!!!). When Chung storms off in a huff, and starts swimming away from the boat, Yun innocently asks T-Man: "Can he make it to shore?" Koo replies with a pregnant, Bogart-esque pause.

Koo is unstoppable in "Wild City." He nails a Mametian line as slick as "I trust you. But I don't trust the money." Koo is so damn charming that he even looks good during a foot-chase where his gangly physical appearance should make him look as hip as Tom Hanks (long legs, ball cap, freshly-pressed white khakis: move over, dadbod, here comes: starched-collar-bod!).

Watching Koo, as T-Man, fire a gun in the air to disperse a crowd is thrilling because it makes you want to believe that he's not playing it cool, but rather introducing you to the next big dime novel hero. I have purposefully kept the film's plot a mystery because the joys of "Wild City" come from getting to know the characters through their bitter one-liners, romantic behavior, and sensational confrontations. Case in point: there's a scene of violence later in the film that is so shockingly grim that it's a small wonder that it works within the context of the rest of the film. The scene in question is a real make-or-break moment, a perfect test of whether or not you can surrender to "Wild City" as an eccentric, but essentially formula-driven narrative. When you see it, you will gasp.

What the Oscar-nominated documentary “Super Size Me” was to the fast-food industry, “That Sugar Film” endeavors to be for businesses that are invested in refined sugar, a nearly unavoidable additive in the majority of processed edibles on grocery shelves. In fact, the claim is made that if you removed all sugar-containing items from a typical store, only 20 percent of the stock would remain.

But instead of a dude’s dude like Morgan Spurlock chowing down on All-American fries, burgers and plus-size soft drinks packed with empty calories to gauge the effects of a McDonald’s-only diet, this cautionary saga about the horrors of sweeteners features laidback Aussie actor Damon Gameau in the role of director, interviewer and on-camera guinea pig.

Back in 2004, the idea that a filmmaker would risk his own well-being by voluntarily only eating garbage for an entire month was quite novel. The popular expose could have possibly been one of the factors that led Mickey D’s to eventually add a few healthier alternatives to its menu. Whether or not the doc also raised awareness among the general public about how such chains contribute to the country’s obesity crisis is another question.

But “Super Size Me” also trafficked in a less edifying kind of carny cinema: Ladies and gentlemen, come watch a man try to eat himself to death. The formerly fit Spurlock would gain 24 pounds, see his body mass index and cholesterol levels soar, suffer from mood swings and lethargy, and accumulate fat in his liver.

A decade later, much of the shock value has dissipated from observing such a nutritionally induced sideshow. That may be why the initially wiry Gameau, a 30-something-ish cross between comic Russell Brand and Bret McKenzie of "Flight of the Conchords," feels the need to jazz up matters in a rather fanciful and intermittently entertaining fashion.

Gameau occasionally shrinks himself down to Ant-Man size, at one point hanging by a rope from his own nose before traveling through his body “Fantastic Voyage”-style. Talking heads show up on food labels, street signs and Times Square billboards. Pop songs such as Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” add a bouncy component. Brit wit Stephen Fry elucidates the difference between glucose, lactose, sucrose and fructose in rhyme. An unbilled Hugh Jackman does some hocus pocus with visual aids concocted with sugar granules on a lit-up podium to illustrate the history of the substance.

Did you know Queen Elizabeth I was a sugar fiend whose teeth rotted and turned black? Well, now you do.

Gameau himself also shows a penchant for walking about in neon yellow or orange underpants during his medical check-ups. It’s all very cute, but if you want sugar-drenched whimsy, why not indulge in “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” instead?

The handling of the dietary experiment doesn’t vary all that much from Spurlock’s overall approach as Gameau prepares to spend two months ingesting 40 teaspoons of sugar a day—what the average Australian takes in. He consults doctors, nutritionists and other experts before subjecting himself to such a regimen since he has been sugar-free for the past five years, thanks to the influence of his girlfriend. The one interesting twist: instead of feasting on fistfuls of jelly beans, mounds of ice cream and piles of Oreos, his intake of sweets comes entirely from supposedly healthy products such as cereal, sports drinks, smoothies, baked beans and juices. It's sort of like when “Seinfeld’s” Elaine questioned whether all that the delicious frozen yogurt at a new neighborhood shop was actually non-fat.

Unlike Spurlock, however, Gameau has a personal reason behind his main impetus for doing the doc. His first child is due in three months. That is why much of what he ingests is often considered good-for-you kid snacks. But many of the damaging effects are the same, including the acquisition of a pot belly, a lack of energy, a decreased attention span, moodiness and an insatiable craving for the next sugar high.

One interesting fact that comes out of Gameau’s self-abusing ordeal is that even though he has been eating the same number of daily calories—a normal 2,300—as he did before, he has packed on 15 pounds mostly around his waist. His acquisition of a dad-bod physique might suggest that all calories are not created equal and that certain sources might affect the body more aversely, something sugar manufacturers with a vested interest vehemently deny.

Gameau also inserts a bit of journalism into the mix with two road trips that elevate "That Sugar Film" beyond a semi-vanity production. He travels to Amata, an aboriginal community of 350 citizens in remote northern Australia. Together, the population consumes 40,000 liters of soft drinks each year—thanks in part to easy access to Coca-Cola and a lack of fresh produce at the local food store—with debilitating and deadly results. Matters do improve when a government-supported program provides better alternatives. That is, until funding is cut.

But anyone who likes to regularly say “yahoo” to a Mountain Dew might change their mind once they witness the devastating effects of an epidemic outbreak of “Mountain Dew mouth”—the result of guzzling five or six cans of this sugar and caffeine-loaded beverage every day—in a rural Kentucky town. A teen named Larry, a Dew devotee whose teeth look like they have been drenched in acid, desperately wants to get dentures. But his dentist can’t complete the tooth-pulling procedure, seen in excruciating detail, since his gums are so infected that the pain killers won’t work.

As for Larry’s mystifying revelation that he will continue to drink Mountain Dew even after he gets his false teeth, it says more about the insidious nature of sugar than anything that Gameau can offer.

“He made my life
better by being a friend of mine.” This line near the end of “I Am Chris
Farley” captures, in many ways, why the loss of Chris Farley hurt so much, and
continues to resonate: he felt like a friend. We had lost talented people
before. We had lost drug addicts and alcoholics. We had lost too many
comedians. But losing Farley felt like losing a friend. It was his relatablity
as much as his talent that made him a superstar. He didn’t look like a
celebrity. He looked like an average guy that you could have known from
Madison, WI. The awkward, shy center of the infamous “The Chris Farley Show”
sketch was something to which we could all relate. Who wouldn’t get nervous around
Paul McCartney? Farley’s humor came from such a genuine desire to entertain. He
was all of us shouting for our mom’s attention at a crowded family function or
hoping that we would know the right thing to say at a social outing. And so
losing him felt like losing a friend. At its best, “I Am Chris Farley,” opening
in limited release this week before hitting the home market and airing on Spike
TV next month, captures why Chris Farley mattered, even if it does sometimes
gloss over a few of the reasons our friend is no longer with us.

“I Am Chris Farley” opens with Lorne Michaels calling its
subject “infuriatingly talented.”
Over an hour later, we’re still hearing someone say, “He had ‘it’.” This is not so much a documentary as a love
letter. It is for fans, by fans in every way. Everything Farley did, from his
childhood to his time at Second City to “Saturday Night Live” and “Tommy Boy”
is captured as landmark sea changes in the world of comedy. Colleagues and fans
including Adam Sandler, David Spade, Mike Myers, Dan Akyroyd, Bo Derek, Bob
Saget, Christina Applegate and more participate in what feels like a memorial
tribute more than anything else.

The first half-hour of “I Am Chris Farley” proves to be the
most interesting, as it allows friends and family from Farley’s youth to remember
what formed this talent. He was a middle child, always looking for mommy’s
attention and competing with his brothers. He was religious, shy, and overly
kind. From an early age, he struggled with weight and self-esteem issues, but
he had natural ability on stage that really came out in college. Believe it or
not, rugby changed Farley’s life, as playing the sport gave him the support of
teammates and the center of attention at parties. Farley’s antics in college
were legendary, but it was when he discovered improv comedy that everything
changed.

Farley went to Chicago with his friends, and contacted the
legendary Del Close for lessons in comedy. It wasn’t long before he ended up on
the main stage of the comedy venue that has produced dozens of household names.
As presented here, Farley’s time at Second City was a force of nature. As the
great Bob Odenkirk (who’s so eloquent here one wishes he would do a whole doc
about the art of comedy) says, everyone who worked at Second City would stop
what they were doing when Farley would do Matt Foley, Motivational Speaker, a
character he would turn into one of the most memorable in the history of “SNL.”

As presented, Farley didn’t audition for “SNL,” he was
plucked from Second City by Michaels himself. As his star grew brighter on the
show, Farley continued to suffer from crippling doubt. Even after the success
of “Tommy Boy,” he worried about what people thought of him, and was crushed,
relapsing, when “Black Sheep” didn’t work. It’s this darker side of Farley that
the doc gives lip service but generally avoids. Every time a relapse is
mentioned, it immediately moves to rehab. It’s a bit too soft in that regard,
unwilling to address the real demons that haunted Farley, how they got there,
and how public perception of the man played into them. Farley was a popular
party animal in college who did extreme things. Did the satisfaction of being a
class clown make him a more likely addict? And what about the fat jokes? The
controversial Chippendales sketch is presented as breakthrough when I actually
find it hard to watch now, especially knowing that Farley called a friend the
night before concerned about being the “fat guy” again.

In the end, “I Am Chris Farley” offers some neat anecdotes—including
the real-life origins of Matt Foley and autobiographical aspects of “Tommy Boy”—and
reminds fans what they loved and what they missed. I kept thinking what Farley
would have thought of it. He probably would have been embarrassed and a bit shy
about the whole thing. But he would have loved the attention. He would have
smiled and laughed. And sometimes that’s enough.

When it was announced that there was going to be a full-length feature film based upon LEGOs, those ubiquitous plastic bricks that people have been playing with and stepping on in their bare feet for decades, most observers scoffed at the very notion of such a thing and assumed that it would be, at best, little more than a extended ad for the toy line. They—and practically everyone else who saw it—were happily surprised to discover that "The LEGO Movie" was actually a smart and endlessly clever film that worked both as a straightforward entertainment and as a smart and occasionally caustic observation of the culture that had developed around them, specifically in regards to the specifically-themed building sets that the company had been concentrating on in recent years that made them a lot of money even as they chipped away at the notion of letting kids use their imaginations to create things instead of following a rigid set of instructions. Based on that, one might hope that "A LEGO Brickumentary," a feature-length documentary about the entire LEGO phenomenon, might also explore the subject at hand with a similarly off-kilter approach but that is not the case with what is essentially a 90-minute infomercial for a product that hardly needs to sell itself anymore at this point.

Hosted by a LEGO-ized version of Jason Bateman (presumably a preview of the upcoming "It's Your Move" set), "A LEGO Brickumentary" takes viewers on a guided tour of all aspects of the LEGO story (while presumably breaking the record for the use of the word "LEGO" in a movie) starting with their humble beginnings in 1957 as the brainchild of Ole Kirk Christiansen, a Denmark-based businessman whose factories had a mysterious tendency to go up in flames through today, where they are the second-biggest toy manufacturer in the world (despite having but one single product to sell) and where there are allegedly 100 LEGO pieces out there for every single person on the planet. There are behind-the-scenes looks at the production process where we get to see the designers and master builders who create and develop the seemingly endless array of new products as well as a detailed look at the creation of an enormous X-Wing that is said to be the biggest LEGO creation ever built.

The toy's enormous fan base of all ages is covered at great length as well from the woman who built an insanely detailed replica of Rivendell from "The Lord of the Rings" to celebrity testimonials from the likes of Ed Sheeran and Trey Parker, who admits that he now finds following the instructions of the themed sets he once poo-poohed to be highly therapeutic after a long day of making decisions at the "South Park" offices. We also learn of some of the more educational aspects of LEGOs, such as how one doctor has used them as a way of reaching out to autistic children and how one fan finds his design for a replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover being manufactured by the company officially after winning a contest through a website dedicated to the vast LEGO community.

Most of this is interesting enough, although a little too self-congratulatory at times, but "A LEGO Brickumentary" never really goes much deeper than that, presumably because of filmmakers Daniel Junge and Kief Davidson not wanting to rock the boat too much lest they upset the LEGO overlords. For example, I would have liked to see a little more debate about the aspect that Parker hinted at in his interview—the clash between the old approach to LEGO-building, in which one got a bunch of bricks and let their imaginations go, and the new, in which one gets a specific kit, often licensed from some popular franchise, and builds them according to their instructions so that they look exactly right. While the film does briefly mention it, I would have liked to have seen a little more about the period in the late 90's when the company began ignoring the wishes of their fanbase by over-specializing their output and nearly destroyed themselves in the process. And while I realize that it would have jeopardized the family-friendly approach that the filmmakers have chosen to adopt, it would have been fun to see more of the more adult-oriented uses that people have made of the toys over the years, ranging from stop-motion recreations of films like "Psycho" to. . .well, LEGO porn.

"A LEGO Brickumentary" is glib and genial and if you know little about them other than the intense pain that stepping on one of them can bring, you may even come away from it having learned a thing or two. However, LEGO devotees—and that is surely the film's target audience—are likely to know pretty much all that it has to offer and then some and asking them to pay top dollar to watch what should have rightly gone out as an extra on a deluxe Blu-Ray edition of "The LEGO Movie" is ridiculous indeed. Those people would be much better off using the money they would have spent on tickets to buy themselves more LEGOs to play with while waiting for the film to arrive on cable, where its modest aspirations and achievements will undoubtedly feel more at home.

It’s symptomatic that the only really memorable scene during “Paulo
Coelho’s Best Story,” a film with a running time of 112 minutes, lasts about 60
seconds and focuses not on the title character, but on his father. Set in a car
while Pedro Coelho (Diaz) listens to a song co-written by his son Paulo (Andrade)
and, realizing he’s the inspiration of its cruel lyrics, fights back the tears,
this scene represents a rare moment of sensibility, authenticity and beauty in
a movie terribly lacking in inspiration.

Written (and produced) by Carolina Kotscho, the screenplay tries to tell
Paulo Coelho’s trajectory before he became "the only living author more translated
than Shakespeare"—from a troubled teen and a troubled young adult until
he graduated to, judging by the film, a problematic old man. Suffering from a problematic
relationship with his supposedly rigid father (and I say "supposedly"
because I often found myself agreeing more with him than with his son), Coelho faced
depression, an inferiority complex for feeling ugly and the rejection of his
books, before finally becoming the author whose “The Alchemist” would turn into
a worldwide phenomenon by combining self-help and esotericism in a package with
immense commercial appeal regardless of its literary merits. (No, I'm not a
fan, although I appreciate some passages of “The Pilgrim”.)

Employing a non-chronological timeline that clearly seeks to disguise
the lack of structure and the fact that the narrative is constructed through
scenes that invariably invest in some drama or artificial conflict, this is the
kind of movie that feels the need to always include a caption indicating the period
in which a scene takes place every time it jumps—even if the
costumes, the art direction and, well, the fact we have been watching the damn
thing for an hour already made it pretty clear the decades we are visiting.
However, hammering the audience with unnecessary exposition seems to be a hobby
of this movie and, thus, it is no surprise when a character says "Paulo is
my grandson" when addressing ... the boy's parents, who, I suppose,
probably are aware of said kinship. Similarly, just in case we hadn’t noticed
young Coelho’s ugliness complex, we would certainly become aware of it when we see him inviting a
girl to dance just to hear the girl's mother say "But precisely the
weirdest and ugliest boy in the whole party?", in a very natural reaction
if you are a caricature in a film that treats the one-dimensionality of its
characters as a rule.

Interestingly, at other times that deserved at least some explanation, "Paulo Coelho’s Best Story" simply expects us to accept certain
incidents without questioning their logic—as in the scene where the
protagonist participates in a children's play when an actor
conveniently fails to show up: after throwing himself on the floor, reciting a
poem and throwing a candy to the audience, the hero is cheered by the children,
who inexplicably start chanting his
name. And, of course, when his musical partnership with Raul Seixas (Ferreira,
perfect) is portrayed, both men are seen creating some of their most iconic
songs through dialogue that simply quotes the lyrics without any insight into
the duo’s creative process.

Moreover, the cinematic treatment of this partnership is
absolutely disgusting: in addition to suggesting Seixas stole the credit of "Gita"
(probably their best song), sending Paulo Coelho into a depressive crisis, the movie
virtually ignores the protagonist's relationship with drugs (and the fact he
introduced them to his partner), and even presents him as some kind of rock
star, concocting an absurd scene in which he can be seen singing with talent
and energy alongside Raul while their were still at the height of success.

Thus, it soon becomes clear that the purpose of "Paulo Coelho’s Best Story" is to throw all kinds of humiliation on its hero, so his eventual victory can emerge as a lesson in persistence; and
therefore is not enough that, as a teen, a doctor
tells him no one will ever want to read his writings: later on, an editor and
friend will practically repeat the statement in order to highlight the irony.

The Paulo Coelho portrayed here
is a selfish, reckless, immature, spoiled and deeply boring person. After
running over a young boy while driving recklessly (and protesting for being
punished by his father for it!), Coelho is basically the same when we meet him
at 65, when, irritated by the incessant talk of the driver hired to transport
him, he steals the man’s car, leaving
him in the middle of nowhere and virtually guaranteeing the poor guy will be
fired. ("Poor man!", a friend laughs after finding out what Coelho
did—in the only semblance of recognition by the narrative that what Paulo did
was reprehensible, since it seems to believe that’s just a manifestation of his
"free spirit." )

Competent at least in its production design, which does a great job of
recreating each time period, "Paulo
Coelho’s Best Story" also impresses with the makeup job that turns Julio
Andrade into a clone of the old Paulo Coelho—at least when we see him in the
distance, as the close-ups end up exposing the artificiality of the prosthetics
(and of course director Daniel Augusto frequently shoots the actor in
close-ups).

Suddenly stopping the narrative after almost two hours as if it had got
tired of telling that story (and filling the blanks with an end text), the
movie shows for its protagonist the same lack of respect exhibited by the caricatures
that tell him he’ll never be a writer—and simply by opening the story presenting
him as a singer that he never was, the movie practically denies Paulo Coelho the
respect of being recognized for his books, as if they were not enough to justify
honoring him. Even if I don’t enjoy his work, I am fully aware that his
success should have yielded at least an acceptable biopic. This is not one.

“‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ flopped in the United States in its original limited release in 1975, but found new life when a shrewd 20th Century Fox executive suggested rebooking the film for midnight shows, targeting a market that back then was becoming increasingly viable. Gradually, a cult developed, consisting partly of movie buffs who loved the B-pictures ‘Rocky Horror’ was referencing, and partly of gay viewers drawn to the film’s transgressive sexuality. Then the phenomenon exploded when a group of dedicated fans started turning screenings into audience participation experiences, complete with costumes, dances, props, and lines shouted in unison. This new way of watching Rocky Horror sprung up spontaneously in a few theaters, then became codified at showings around the world. At some point, amid all the scripted insults and role-playing, moviegoers forgot something important: ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ is pretty good. Even without all the peripherals, it features catchy songs, suitably campy performances, fantastic costumes and art direction, and a gender-bending eroticism that’s daring even now. The ‘Rocky Horror’ rituals have overtaken the movie’s reputation as a piece of cinema, to the extent that ‘virgins’ typically arrive at their first screening with their reactions pre-sorted, and never take the time to actually watch the film. Something similar has happened across the internet over the past few years, where the performative aspect of fandom has become as big a part of the way that films are processed as reviews and ordinary online conversations. This isn’t an inherently bad trend. If nothing else, the rise of the internet as a populist entertainment platform has allowed for some reassuring insight into our shared capacity for creativity and wit. And a lot of the ways that people remix and react to what’s at the multiplex is inspired by genuine passion. But a lot… isn’t. In the place of spontaneous, honest, imaginative responses, I’m increasingly seeing a pro forma set of filters through which movies new and old are being considered—often at the expense of what those pictures actually are, and what they have to say.”

2.

“Five years after helming the modern animated classic, ‘The Iron Giant’ (heading back to theaters September 30th), Brad Bird brought a new level of sophistication to Pixar with this exceptionally nuanced action picture about a family endowed with super powers. Predating the Marvel craze, not to mention a glut of DIY superheroes, and even featuring a pre-‘Avengers’ Samuel L. Jackson (who gets some great Tarantinian dialogue about the nuisance of ‘monologuing’ villains), this film should be studied by any studio intent on bringing comic book icons to life. What makes these characters so compelling is how their powers seem to emerge organically from their personalities—the mother (Holly Hunter) literally holds her family together with her elastic arms, the young son (Spencer Fox) creates rebellious mischief with lighting speed, and the older daughter (Sarah Vowell) wishes she could disappear from the gaze of cute guys at school—and does. As for Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson), his towering physique becomes a great source of humor after society has stigmatized the powers of super beings (much like what happens to Elsa in ‘Frozen’), forcing them to work menial jobs while suppressing their natural talents. His embittered line about American culture ‘finding new ways to celebrate mediocrity’ is emblematic of what Pixar is a rebuke against. The layers of wit in Bird’s Oscar-worthy script are on par with the first three seasons of ‘Arrested Development,’ and the director’s own vocal performance as super-suit designer Edna Mode (a tribute to legendary costume designer Edith Head) is an utter delight.”

3.

“I have a very rational, straightforward approach. Rule number one is clarity, and rule number two is geography—I start with that, and then sometimes I have to push myself to get outside that box of clear, simple storytelling. Some of what you’re saying has to do with my fixation with anamorphic cinematography, and some of it has to do with my belief that the kind of shaky-cam, rapid-editing style that often gets used is based in fear. It’s based in this fear that the audience will get bored. I don’t believe that; I don’t believe that there’s an erosion caused by YouTube and video games and all that other stuff. The erosion comes when people aren’t exposed to classical storytelling. Your observation about the style is correct in that we never cut [in ‘Rogue Nation’] unless there’s a reason to cut—each shot is chosen very specifically to move the emotional progression forward. All I’m interested in is making you a bystander to the action when necessary, and then at key moments making you the protagonist—I’m moving you back and forth between those points of view. I love that you referenced Vincente Minnelli. I don’t often talk about him, but he’s a major influence, especially ‘Some Came Running.’ I really envy the way guys like Minnelli and Lumet and John Sturges just let the camera sit in the corner of the room—they build carefully designed sets and let things play out almost like a play, and they very carefully choose when to jump in for a close-up because a specific line means something in terms of raising the dramatic tension. It’s very hard in modern filmmaking because you don’t have the time to rehearse, you don’t have the time to develop the screenplay the way those filmmakers would. Often you’re building the movie in the editing room as opposed to starting with a careful plan.”

4.

“What it may come down to is the limits of something that seemed to define this genuinely great era of high-end television: the heroic showrunner auteur. Instead of being a product made by committee, these new character-driven series were crafted by mavericks and intellectuals who compressed all their experience, all their neuroses, into their storytelling. These smart cable shows were, as journalist Brett Martin laid out in his useful chronicle of the post-‘Sopranos’ revolution, ‘Difficult Men,’ our age’s equivalent to the Great American Novel, the serious film. (And of course, the term ‘auteur’ was most famously applied to the work of heavy American filmmakers, and it was the individuality of their vision, in part, that made them major artists in the way that mere craftsmen or journeyman directors were not.) Sometimes it works: ‘The Wire’ is one of the great documents of our time, and, a lot of that greatness came from David Simon and his decades of journalistic storytelling. Despite some dissipation near the end, Matt Weiner’s ‘Mad Men’ chronicled a misunderstood period of American life in a fresh, lively way. Would we have wanted difficult man David Milch to have had a collaborator for ‘Deadwood’? Probably not — though we’d have preferred another season or two. But Pizzolatto, whose roots are in a more purely auteurist form — literary writing — doesn’t seem to be as suited to pure auteurism. (For what it’s worth, even David Simon drew on novelists, including Dennis Lehane, to help write ‘The Wire.’) With the first season of ‘True Detective,’ he seemed to have a real collaboration going with director Cary Fukunaga, but that didn’t end well. (McConaughey and Harrelson may’ve had a major shaping role on that first season as well.) With Fukunaga gone, and Pizzolatto’s capital sky-high, he brought in Justin Lin, best known for the ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise — a major stylistic departure. And it still feels like one guy running away with himself and his own bad habits.”

5.

“The series features 12 of Arzner's directorial efforts (including six that the UCLA archive restored) as well as two silent films she only wrote — ‘The Red Kimono’ and the energetic naval drama ‘Old Ironsides,’ the latter for which she also was script supervisor and edited. Those films show one reason for her longevity as a studio director: She knew the craft of film inside out. As Judith Mayne, author of ‘Directed by Dorothy Arzner,’ wrote, ‘competence was far more important than brilliance or originality in making her career possible.’ But, obviously, there was more to Arzner as a director than that, as she herself was not shy about expressing in sentiments that ring as provocatively true today as they did then. ‘Try as a man may, he will never be able to get the woman's viewpoint in telling certain stories,’ Arzner told the Washington Post in 1930. ‘Many stories demand treatment at the hands of a woman, not only from the script side but also in the direction, and here a woman should be allowed to direct in all cases.’ What this viewpoint, Arzner's empathetic sense of the complicity, support and sometimes rivalry between women meant in practice is well illustrated by the series' opening-night double bill of 1929's ‘The Wild Party’ and 1930's ‘Anybody's Woman.’ ‘Party’ was the first sound film for star Clara Bow, whose nervousness about the new technology reportedly led Arzner to improvise a boom mike setup by putting a microphone on a fishing rod.”

Image of the Day

Video of the Day

Following a July 27th interview, Scott Feinberg has 100-year-old theatre veteran Patricia Morison send a video message to fellow Anna (from "The King and I"), Kelli O'Hara. It'll make you whistle a happy tune, no doubt.